Pastor's Letter

Dear Friends in Christ,

October is stewardship month at CTS (as in most Lutheran parishes) and it is always a tense time for the Parish Council, the Treasurer, the Stewardship committee and, this year, Steve Garvey. Our goal every year is to do more than "extract" from our membership enough funds to run the parish for another year; our goal is to have each and every one of us think about his/her relationship to our possessions, to our "wealth."

When St. Paul says (II Corinthians 9:7) that "God loves a cheerful giver," he does not merely mean that you cough up your dough without complaining a lot. He means that you are cheerful because you are using your resources out of your identity as a Christian disciple. The Roman philosopher, Seneca, said the same thing more elaborately: "For, since in the case of a benefit the chief pleasure of it comes from the intention of the bestower, he who by his very hesitation has shown that he made his bestowal unwillingly has not 'given,' but has failed to withstand the effort to extract it."

What St. Paul means by "cheerful giver" Seneca calls having a right intention. Identity is about what I want to do with my life, including my wealth. Christianity confers on us a love identity in which I see my life, including my possessions, as means of grace, ways to enhance my quality of life as well as yours by using God's gifts to build a better world for us all.

Social democracy seems to get this better than our individualistic democracy where every contribution or tax dollar is seen as an "extraction" to be given only grudgingly. St. Paul's idea is that Christianity changes identity so that I think toward our common needs. Here is how St. Luke describes it in Acts: "All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts." Paul's "cheerful giver" in Luke becomes new humans who act in a new way toward others because Jesus has given them "glad and generous hearts." This is what Seneca means when he talks about the pleasure of giving when it comes out of "intention." Christian giving is not an extraction, it is intentional. I give in order to work toward a better world, the one imagined by Jesus. Participating in that sublime project as a child of God makes me cheerful indeed!

Yours in Christ,

--Pastor Bastien